Opinion
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Wynne's Wonderland is nightmare for Ontario

Ontarians could be forgiven for thinking they've slipped down a rabbit hole to live with the Wizard of Odd.

For example, Premier Kathleen Wynne recently chose a meeting of Liberal suits (empty and otherwise) to apologize for how badly her government has screwed up the energy file.

In almost the same breath she laid blame at the feet of the Progressive Conservatives for the mess the Liberals inherited 13 years ago.

In that period the Grits have done nothing but make it worse in spades.

Were the premier in the real world rather than Katy's Wonderland, she might have skipped the apology and gone straight to fixing the problem.

People in Ontario have been choosing food over power, or vice versa, for years.

Government officials denied power poverty, until a byelection loss finally got through to them.

Then Wynne and company did the big smoke and mirrors thing with a throne speech to announce an eight per cent tax reduction.

They didn't stop to consider that eight per cent of way too much is almost no help.

The throne speech nonsense is called showboating. In spite of the fact nobody bought it, the premier is at it again with a "listening" tour of the province.

Instead of chaining herself to her desk until energy and other disasters are fixed, the premier's going to pretend to care what people think.

Could it be that the tour replaces action because nobody in government has a clue how to solve the problems?

Anyway, we can save the premier lots of time and money, including the cost of security for arguably the least popular premier in history.

We can tell her much of what she'll hear beyond the desperate need to fix energy pricing, which is having a devastating effect on municipalities, businesses and even hospitals.

Here are some others:

Put a moratorium on school closings until boards of education prove their case to the people.

In Katy's Wonderland, the people have to prove the case to keep schools open while board administrators take their marching orders to close, close close from Queen's Park.

On that issue, Education Minister Mitzie Hunter recently said the revamped closing process "ensures parent voices are heard." On her tour, the premier will hear how well that is working. It's not.

Wynne's ears will burn with demands to stop the unconscionable growth in health-care bureaucracy and put funds and people into front line patient care.

Local health integration networks have proven incapable of increasing anything except the expense line and yet they're on a growth path while we still fight with doctors about pay and lose nurses.

Another demand will be to stop the rapid increase in user fees for everything from driver's licences to hunting permits.

Until government comes to understand that reducing the costs of the overweening bureaucracy in Ontario instead of hiking prices is the only answer for the future, we will continue to suffer.

Folks likely will suggest Wynne decentralize government and offer incentives (lower energy costs maybe) for businesses to move out of the Big Smoke, so Toronto won't have to spend gazillions of dollars to fix gridlock.

The list of issues about which the premier's ear will be bent goes on and on.

Last but not least on that list, the premier is likely to hear that she shouldn't let her office door hit her on the way out.

Unlike Wonderland, there's no other way to wake up from the nightmare of this government.